Secret CIA files released on Hitler, Nazi bigwigs

Doctor saw Fuehrer becoming 'world's craziest criminal'

Pauline Jelinek, The Associated Press

Published 10:00 pm, Friday, April 27, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Adolf Hitler was a "border case between genius and insanity," the Nazi leader's doctor told a U.S. informant before World War II, predicting he could become "the craziest criminal the world ever knew," a CIA document shows.

The document is among 10,000 pages of CIA files declassified yesterday in an effort to shed more light on Nazi war criminals and how Western governments later used them as intelligence sources.

Carroll noted at the outset of the memo that there was a question about the informant's credibility. But he went on to report that an informant named Hans Bie told him he had talked to Sauerbruch at a party in January 1937 and that Sauerbruch discussed Hitler.

"Sauerbruch ... stated that from close observation of Hitler for many years, he had formed the opinion that the Nazi leader was a border case between genius and insanity and that ... the decision would take place in the near future whether Hitler's mind would swing toward the latter," Carroll's memo said.

"Sauerbruch then said that should the latter occur, Hitler would become "the craziest criminal the world every saw," the memo said.

It went on to say that when Bie and Sauerbruch again met in April 1937, the doctor "stated that in his opinion, the swing towards insanity had taken place and that the first symptom was the dismissal of moderate members of Hitler's government."

In a press conference at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, officials and historians who reviewed the documents said they also revealed that Kurt Waldheim, who later would become U.N. secretary-general, was not used as an intelligence source by the U.S. government.

The files were released by the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working group first established in 1999 to coordinate a large-scale effort by U.S. agencies to find, declassify and release U.S. records on the Nazi regime.

So far, U.S. government agencies have declassified more than 3 million pages; they are available for research in the National Archives and Records Administrations.